Quick Search

 
All Fields Title Author Description ISBN
or
Browse by Subject

Find Us on Facebook!

Sale Bargains &
Special Offers

Distributed Titles

Current Catalogs and Leaflets
Take advantage of our latest offers

Information on Shipping Charges

Damaged Books

Conference Timetable

Request Catalogues

Labyrinth Revisited: Rethinking `Minoan' Archaeology

edited by Yannis Hamilakis

Minoan Crete is one of the most intensively investigated archaeological cultures in the world, and one that has often captured the public imagination. It is a Bronze Age Aegean society, but it has been intimately connected with the Classical Greek myth of King Minos and his Labyrinth since Sir Arthur Evans excavated and restored (some would say ôrebuiltö) the important site of Knossos, more than a century ago. Yet many archaeological interpretations of this fascinating culture are still largely traditional in focus and often anachronistic. This collection of papers, challenging and re-examining many conventional and established versions of æMinoanÆ history, is thus long overdue. How have modern preconceptions and socio-political developments shaped archaeological interpretations of æMinoanÆ society? What were the gender roles and attitudes of the inhabitants of Bronze Age Crete? How can data such as the puzzling architecture, the stunning wall-paintings, the elaborate and abundant pots, the landscape and the way it is perceived by humans, help us understand the nature and the negotiations of power and the role of the so-called palaces? These are just some of the questions that this book addresses, considering æMinoanÆ culture from variety of interpretative angles, and situating æMinoanÆ archaeology in the mainstream of archaeological thinking and practice.

CONTENTS: What Future for the æMinoanÆ Past? Re-thinking Minoan Archaeology (Yannis Hamilakis); Archaeology as Museology: Re-thinking the Minoan Past (Donald Preziosi); Virtual Discourse: Arthur Evans and the Reconstructions of the Minoan Palace at Knossos (Louise Hitchcock and Paul Koudounaris); Cretan Questions: Politics and Archaeology 1898-1913 (John C McEnroe); Palaces with Faces in Protopalatial Crete: Looking for the People in the First Minoan States (Marianna Nikolaidou); Gender and the Figurative Art of Late Bronze Age Knossos (Benjamin Alberti); Integration and Complexity in the Late Pre-Palatial Period: A View from the Countryside in Eastern Crete (D C Haggis); Landscapes of Memory, Craft and Power in Pre-Palatial and Proto-Palatial Knossos (Peter M Day and David E Wilson); Mind the Gap: Between Pots and Politics in Minoan Studies (Carl Knappett); Pottery as a Barometer of Economic Change: From the Protopalatial to the Neopalatial Society in Central Crete (Aleydis Van de Moortel); Millennial Ambiguities (John Bennet). 248p, many b/w illus (April 2002)

Review Quotes

"a must for all archaeology students and scholars in the field"

Ilse Schoep
L'Antiquite Classique (2007)

"This book is a critical and topical reappraisal of the field"

N James
Antiquity, 76 (2002)

Table of Contents

What Future for the 'Minoan' Past? Re-thinking Minoan Archaeology (Yannis Hamilakis)
Archaeology as Museology: Re-thinking the Minoan Past (Donald Preziosi)
Virtual Discourse: Arthur Evans and the Reconstructions of the Minoan Palace at Knossos (Louise Hitchcock and Paul Koudounaris)
Cretan Questions: Politics and Archaeology 1898-1913 (John C McEnroe)
Palaces with Faces in Protopalatial Crete: Looking for the People in the First Minoan States (Marianna Nikolaidou)
Gender and the Figurative Art of Late Bronze Age Knossos (Benjamin Alberti)
Integration and Complexity in the Late Pre-Palatial Period: A View from the Countryside in Eastern Crete (D C Haggis)
Landscapes of Memory, Craft and Power in Pre-Palatial and Proto-Palatial Knossos (Peter M Day and David E Wilson)
Mind the Gap: Between Pots and Politics in Minoan Studies (Carl Knappett)
Pottery as a Barometer of Economic Change: From the Protopalatial to the Neopalatial Society in Central Crete (Aleydis Van de Moortel)
Millennial Ambiguities (John Bennet)

Browse other Minoan books

Browse other History of Archaeology books